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Spring Cleaning: What to Do With Association Documents


Jennifer Mullin de Winter


Spring is here, time to refresh and renew! Go through and get rid of the old, in with the new! Wait, what’s that pile of dusty boxes in the corner? Oh, someone moved and found these boxes of association documents? What do we do with them? Can we just recycle or shred them? The answer to these questions is both yes and no.


Record retention “rules” vary with the document. The purpose of creating records is to document rights and obligations within the community (governing documents, meeting minutes, board resolutions), or to understand what is going on with the community (budgets, newsletters, financial statements, ballots, invoices, etc.). How long you keep documents should relate to why you create them in the first place. The biggest reason to dispose of documents is the cost of storage. Most associations have no storage facilities, and may be charged $5 a month per box for storage of papers that no one may ever look at.


Documents that reflect permanent actions should be kept permanently. Board meeting minutes and resolutions have a continuing effect, even if changes are later made. Records of changes to the physical assets should be kept permanently as well, to document history of repairs and changes.


Documents that reflect future plans, and the current status of constantly changing circumstances, should be kept only as long as there is some relevance. You have limited opportunity to go back to correct, change or challenge things, so saving documents a long time has limited value. Typically we look at statute of limitations, which bar any claims, as a measure of the longest period of time to save a document. Since the statute of limitations for contracts is six years, we suggest seven years as the longest time to dispose of any contract documents. Documents like ballots for an election or budget would likely have no value more than a year after they were cast.


As a general rule, keep contracts – for management, landscaping, maintenance, pest control, and insurance policies, among other things – for seven years after they expire. But some contracts (landscaping for example) once completed and paid, may have no potential claims, and could be disposed of a year after completion.


14 Community Associations Journal | March 2017


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